Demetria Martinez
Demetria Martinez is an author, activist, lecturer and columnist. Her autobiographical essays, Confessions of a Berlitz-Tape Chicana (Univ. of Oklahoma Press), winner of the 2006 International Latino Book Award in the category of Best Biography, is now out. Her books include the widely translated novel, Mother Tongue (Ballantine), winner of a Western States Book Award for Fiction, and two books of poetry, Breathing Between the Lines and The Devil's Workshop (Univ. of Arizona Press). (Martinez reads a sampling of poems from Breathing Between the Lines on her new CD, with music by Devon Hall.) She writes a column for the National Catholic Reporter, an independent progressive newsweekly.
Mother Tongue is based in part upon Martinez's 1988 trial for conspiracy against the U.S. government in connection with transporting Salvadoran refugees into the country, a charge that with others carried a 25 year prison sentence. A religion reporter at the time covering the faith-based Sanctuary Movement, she was found not guilty on First Amendment grounds.
Born in Albuquerque, NM in 1960, where she now resides, Martinez earned her BA from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Martinez teaches at the annual June writing workshop at the William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences at the University of Mass., Boston.
In New Mexico she is active with Enlace Comunitario, an immigrants' rights group that serves Spanish-speaking victims of domestic violence.